"Farewell! Follow fast!" cried Gandalf. "Away, Shadowfax!"

The great horse tossed his head. His flowing tail flicked in the moonlight. Then he leapt forward, spurning the earth, and was gone like the north wind from the mountains.

"A beautiful, restful night!" said Merry to Aragorn. "Some folk have wonderful luck. He did not want to sleep, and he wanted to ride with Gandalf - and there he goes! Instead of being turned into a stone himself to stand here for ever as a warning."

"If you had been the first to lift the Orthanc-stone, and not he, how would it be now?" said Aragorn. "You might have done worse. Who can say? But now it is your luck to come with me, I fear. At once. Go and get ready, and bring anything that Pippin left behind. Make haste!"

Over the plains Shadowfax was flying, needing no urging and no guidance. Less than an hour had passed, and they had reached the Fords of Isen and crossed them. The Mound of the Riders and its cold spears lay grey behind them.

Pippin was recovering. He was warm, but the wind in his face was keen and refreshing. He was with Gandalf. The horror of the stone and of the hideous shadow over the moon was fading, things left behind in the mists of the mountains or in a passing dream. He drew a deep breath.

"I did not know you rode bare-back, Gandalf," he said. "You haven't a saddle or a bridle!"

"I do not ride elf-fashion, except on Shadowfax," said Gandalf. "But Shadowfax will have no harness. You do not ride Shadowfax: he is willing to carry you-or not. If he is willing, that is enough. It is then his business to see that you remain on his back, unless you jump off into the air."

"How fast is he going?" asked Pippin. "Fast by the wind, but very smooth. And how light his footfalls are!"

"He is running now as fast as the swiftest horse could gallop," answered Gandalf;"but that is not fast for him. The land is rising a little here, and is more broken than it was beyond the river. But see how the White Mountains are drawing near under the stars! Yonder are the Thrihyrne peaks like black spears. It will not be long before we reach the branching roads and come to the Deeping-coomb, where the battle was fought two nights ago."

Pippin was silent again for a while. He heard Gandalf singing softly to himself, murmuring brief snatches of rhyme in many tongues, as the miles ran under them. At last the wizard passed into a song of which the hobbit caught the words: a few lines came clear to his ears through the rushing of the wind:

Tall ships and tall kings

Three times three,

What brought they from the foundered land

Over the flowing sea?

Seven stars and seven stones

And one white tree.

"What are you saying, Gandalf?" asked Pippin.

"I was just running over some of the Rhymes of Lore in my mind ' answered the wizard. "Hobbits, I suppose, have forgotten them, even those that they ever knew."

"No, not all," said Pippin. "And we have many of our own, which wouldn't interest you, perhaps. But I have never heard this one. What is it about - the seven stars and seven stones?"

"About thepalantiri of the Kings of Old," said Gandalf.

"And what are they?"

"The name meantthat which looks far away . The Orthanc-stone was one."

"Then it was not made, not made' - Pippin hesitated -"by the Enemy?"

"No," said Gandalf. "Nor by Saruman. It is beyond his art, and beyond Sauron's too. Thepalantiri came from beyond Westernesse from Eldamar. The Noldor made them. Feanor himself, maybe, wrought them, in days so long ago that the time cannot be measured in years. But there is nothing that Sauron cannot turn to evil uses. Alas for Saruman! It was his downfall, as I now perceive. Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves. Yet he must bear the blame. Fool! to keep it secret, for his own profit. No word did he ever speak of it to any of the Council. We had not yet given thought to the fate of thepalantiri of Gondor in its ruinous wars. By Men they were almost forgotten. Even in Gondor they were a secret known only to a few; in Arnor they were remembered only in a rhyme of lore among the Dunedain."

"What did the Men of old use them for?" asked Pippin, delighted and astonished at getting answers to so many questions, and wondering how long it would last.

"To see far off, and to converse in thought with one another," said Gandalf. "In that way they long guarded and united the realm of Gondor. They set up Stones at Minas Anor, and at Minas Ithil, and at Orthanc in the ring of Isengard. The chief and master of these was under the Dome of Stars at Osgiliath before its ruin. The three others were far away in the North. In the house of Elrond it is told that they were at Annuminas, and Amon Sul, and Elendil's Stone was on the Tower Hills that look towards Mithlond in the Gulf of Lune where the grey ships lie.

"Eachpalantir replied to each, but all those in Gondor were ever open to the view of Osgiliath. Now it appears that, as the rock of Orthanc has withstood the storms of time, so there thepalantir of that tower has remained. But alone it could do nothing but see small images of things far off and days remote. Very useful, no doubt, that was to Saruman; yet it seems that he was not content. Further and further abroad he gazed, until he cast his gaze upon Barad-dur. Then he was caught!

"Who knows where the lost Stones of Arnor and Gondor now lie buried, or drowned deep? But one. at least Sauron must have obtained and mastered to his purposes. I guess that it was the Ithil-stone, for he took Minas Ithil long ago and turned it into an evil place: Minas Morgul, it has become.

"Easy it is now to guess how quickly the roving eye of Saruman was trapped and held; and how ever since he has been persuaded from afar, and daunted when persuasion would not serve. The biter bit, the hawk under the eagle's foot, the spider in a steel web! How long, I wonder, has he been constrained to come often to his glass for inspection and instruction, and the Orthanc-stone so bent towards Barad-dur that, if any save a will of adamant now looks into it, it will bear his mind and sight swiftly thither? And how it draws one to itself! Have I not felt it? Even now my heart desires to test my will upon it, to see if I could not wrench it from him and turn it where I would-to look across the wide seas of water and of time to Tirion the Fair, and perceive the unimaginable hand and mind of Feanor at their work, while both the White Tree and the Golden were in flower!" He sighed and fell silent.

"I wish I had known all this before," said Pippin. "I had no notion of what I was doing."